Reading Feed (November 2016)

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Blog:Overcoming Bias | My Play -- "In recent posts I said that play is ancient and robust, and I outlined what play consists of. I claimed that play is a powerful concept, but I haven’t supported that claim much. Today, I’ll consider some personal examples..."

Blog:Marginal Revolution | Arguments to ponder for Thanksgiving -- "The population of wild koalas in the southeast portion of Australia’s Queensland state has plunged by 80% in less than two decades, but researchers are offering a simple plan to save them. They can sum it up in three words: daylight saving time."

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Blog:Thing of Things | On the Presidential Election -- "I think it is a problem that Republican voters who care about white identity politics seem willing to elect incompetent people. While identity politics also plays a role in the Democratic nominating process, at least identity-politics-motivated voters on the left seem to favor qualified centrists with a slight penchant for war crimes. I do not know how to get identity-politics-motivated voters on the right to share this preference..."

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Blog:Marginal Revolution | Bravo to Janet Yellen -- "Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen warned lawmakers that as they consider such spending, they should keep an eye on the national debt. Yellen also said that while the economy needed a big boost with fiscal stimulus after the financial crisis, that’s not the case now." Meanwhile, Trump says that he won't ask Yellen to resign when he takes office, though he will look to replace her when her term expires in 2018.

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Blog:Overcoming Bias | Dial It Back -- "I've been disturbed by rising US political polarization over recent decades, with each election accompanied by more extreme rhetoric saying 'absolutely everything is now at stake!' And I’ve been worried that important social institutions could erode when more people believe such claims."

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Blog:Overcoming Bias | Trump, Political Innovator -- "You can dislike political innovation in general. But if innovation is the process of adapting to changing conditions, it must be mostly a question of when, not if. And less frequent innovations are probably bigger changes, which is probably more disruptive overall. So what you should really be asking is: what were the obstacles to smaller past innovations in Trump’s new direction? And how can we reduce such obstacles?"

Blog:Schneier on Security | Mass Spectroscopy for Surveillance -- "These findings introduce an additional form of trace evidence from skin-associated lifestyle chemicals found on personal belongings. Such information could help a criminal investigator narrowing down the owner of an object found at a crime scene, such as a suspect or missing person..."

Comic:xkcd | TV Problems -- "Don't you have a computer science degree? / That just means I understand how everything went so wrong."

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Long:Vanity Fair | Michael Lewis on Kahneman and Tversky -- "The risk of running directly into enemy tanks and planes was the least of it. There were land mines everywhere; it was easy to get lost. 'They didn’t have guards,' said Daniela Gordon, their commanding officer. 'They guarded themselves.' All of them felt less concern for Amos than for Danny. 'We were very worried about sending Danny on his own,' said Eli Fishoff, head of the field psychologists. 'I wasn’t so worried about Amos—because Amos was a fighter.'" h/t Tyler Cowen.

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Blog:Interfaces of the Word | They’re going to keep losing -- "You know for a brief moment there, on Wednesday, I thought that there was a chance that we’d see change where it’s needed, from the Democrats and from the liberal media that drives so much of Democrat messaging and strategy..."

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Blog:Marginal Revolution | “Our Principles” -- "The problem with standing for principles is that it allows you to remain unsullied by the political fray, to stand back and wait until yet another presidential election cycle when 'our principles' can perhaps be applied. And if we lose, it’s OK, because we still have 'our principles.' What Trump has been able to seize upon is growing dissatisfaction with this endless deferral..."

Blog:Marginal Revolution | Saudi Arabia fact of the day -- "[T]he Saudi adult population will more than double in the next fifteen years, driving subsidies and other government payments to unsustainable levels." Something of context for the Saudi government's move to diversify out of a stake of Saudi Aramco, but obviously that won't be enough...

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Blog:Marginal Revolution | How bad is it to hire an ex-con? -- "[I]ndividuals with criminal records have an involuntary separation rate that is no higher than that of other employees and a voluntary separation rate that is much lower. Employees with a criminal record do have a slightly higher overall rate of discharge for misconduct than do employees without a record, although we find increased misconduct only for sales positions. We also find that firms that do not use information about criminal backgrounds seem to compensate by placing more weight on qualifications that are correlated with a criminal record, such as low educational attainment."

Blog:Slate Star Codex | Book Review: House of God -- "All I can say is that it was really well done. The whole thing had a touch of magical realism, which turns out to be exactly the right genre for a story about medicine. Real medicine is absolutely magical realist. It’s a series of bizarre occurrences just on the edge of plausibility happening to incredibly strange people for life-and-death stakes, day after day after day, all within the context of the weirdest and most byzantine bureaucracy known to humankind."